When falling feels like flying
by Minne-My
Summary: Bernie gets divorced. Canon divergence


Major Berenice Wolfe was a failed wife and mother. Excellent at her job, mending and stitching other people's wounds but useless at tending to herself and her family. That day, the solicitor acknowledged that while she was indeed a fit parent, her military medical career meant that her husband would get primary custody of their children. Cameron only had another year to go until he could decide where to live but no doubt he would chose his father, the more familiar parent. Bernie knew she might have to kiss goodbye to her chances of having a good relationship with Charlotte as she was even younger but she did not contest the decision. It was mutual. Having willingly taken the blame, she knew that that her freedom would cost her but she was at the point where she could not stand to be suffocated by the pretence of being a wife any longer. She had asked for the divorce a while back but he hadn't understood the reason. She didn't think she could verbalise it at that point. But the guilt ate away at her for too long and one day she'd thrown a grenade in the middle of their marriage.

'No this isn't exactly working for me either Bernie, but we're muddling along, aren't we?'

She knew he wasn't content with just muddling along. He'd always wanted more of her than she could give. But he would put up with it for as long as he could. His tune had changed when she'd finally confessed that she'd kissed someone else. Another woman. He hadn't seen that coming. Neither had she.

'I told you that I wanted a divorce. You ignored me.'

'I couldn't believe that you would throw away our marriage because you were bored of me.'

'I think it's gone beyond that, don't you think?'

'Have you ever loved me?'

'I love you as a father to our children. Just not as a husband.'

She'd apologised, he'd shouted, she'd wept, he'd retreat in shock. She moved out not long after they'd sat the children down and told them that they would be separating. The house was in his name, having been his mother's, she had no right to it. Neither of them had thought about the consequences of that. His triumphant righteousness was short lived as she had calmly told him that she had no interest in taking the house from him. She would do almost anything to make sure that neither he nor the children were disrupted in daily life. She only requested to see the children without complications. He was tempted to make it difficult for her, she could tell but he didn't have the heart to do that to their children. Charlotte was inconsolable as it was and Cameron angrily clammed up. Bernie knew it would be a long time before they would forgive her but she could wait for eternity until they would.

Alex had been her undoing, her path to freedom and while it was short lived, those series of kisses had been dynamite, smouldering through her veins until it burst through and ignited her longing for something more than mechanical fumbling in the dark. She knew that wouldn't hold up in her defence so she didn't use it; having briefly explained that she and Marcus Dunn were not sexually compatible, it came with the assumption that because she was a lesbian, it wasn't him that had failed to satisfy her, she had failed to satisfy herself. He wasn't to blame for her adultery. That much was true. She had wrecked everything herself. However, could Marcus have tried just a little bit harder to find out what had made her tick? He certainly could have. The only time when she had referenced it was when he had complained that she had been less than enthusiastic in bed.

'I gave you plenty of blowjobs to compensate' she retorted; feathers ruffled at being called frigid. Even if it were true, like any other woman, she resented being labelled as such.

Marcus and the solicitor looked shocked at her frankness. Bernie felt a stab of spiteful pleasure towards the men. 'I can't say I received the same in kind. You gave up on foreplay early on in our marriage, how did you expect me to enjoy the monotony? I wasn't going to insult you and fake it.'

Marcus hesitated. She wasn't wrong and he grudgingly admitted it. Of all the things she'd lied about, that wasn't one.

'You didn't seem to want it.'

'How would you know? You stopped offering it. It didn't make me feel like I was able to initiate.'

They were only proving to the solicitor that communication wasn't their strong point.

'The only thing I want is to see our children when I come back' she emphasised. He had threatened her with no access, calling her bluff until she made the appointment with the solicitor within the week. He knew that he would likely have primary custody but it was the thought that she had done what he thought she never would. He tried to persuade her, to soothe her but her having gone through with it had shocked him. He thought he knew her.

'I've known you for too long, Bern, you can't tell me I don't know what's in your head.'

Every time he said it, she'd look at him with a frown and walk away. She hated him patronising her. She kept quiet to keep the peace. That last time she told him that he knew very little about her and what she was thinking. It had all changed from there. She started sleeping in the spare room after a night out. She said she hadn't wanted to wake him but when he continued sleeping there, he was starting to wonder what she was really thinking. He wasn't to know that she had kissed another woman that night. That she had felt too guilty to look him in the eye for a week, like he could see her betrayal etched out on her face, a scarlet letter stamped on her forehead.

She'd wrestled with it ever since, dismissed it as a one-off, a moment of drunken madness. The woman was a decade younger than her for goodness sakes! It should never had worked between them. But it had been electric, for all that it was only three kisses. Each one had set her alight, the feeling she needed to have with her husband. Alex hadn't minded being her experiment, she was young and free to do as she wished. She liked to play the field and kissing a 40 something year old was just another notch on her bedpost. Not for the first time Bernie had beaten herself up about her stupidity to marry the first boy she had known, the first one who had asked for her hand in marriage. It would come to her, they said, that love. Just give it time. But two children later and it still hadn't. Marcus was a good father and on their good days she had such fondness for him. When he looked up at her from playing Lego on the floor with the children and smiled, she thought that she could feel love for him. But it was always so fleeting.

'I'm sorry. I never should have said that.'

Marcus had admitted his threat and was gently admonished by the solicitor for his rash words.

'I won't restrict the children from seeing you.'

'You'd better not. I may make a terrible wife but I'm not a terrible mother. If the roles were reversed and your job in the military took you away from home, everyone would have found it reasonable because you're a man. All I get is judgment. I'm damn good at my job, it gives me just as much purpose as being a mother and I shouldn't be penalised for it just because I'm a woman.'

They couldn't argue with that.

In the end, it didn't even matter. Because she was invalided out of the army on her next job. Being blown up was a good enough reason to come back and recover. The first time sleeping in the marital bed for a long time, still alone. Marcus took the spare room. It felt wrong. She didn't belong in that house. She supposed that never really did. She couldn't pretend any longer. She wasn't going to string him along anymore, couldn't keep quiet about her desires.

In that time inbetween the last solicitor's meeting and the finalisation, her thoughts turned to Serena. Alex had known that she was married but Serena hadn't. A one-night stand to get it out of her system. How she justified that, she didn't know. But it did reveal something rather important that she had been afraid to admit to herself. She wanted women. She'd yearned for other women before she'd even known it. It was all she'd thought about, tossing and turning in the spare bed, thinking about how one encounter with a woman inflamed her more than any number of years with her husband. She'd known Marcus since secondary school but she'd never told him things that she'd told Serena. Serena didn't want to be an accessory to adultery even though it was Bernie's fault. Her lie. A few weeks after their last meeting when she'd seen Serena exiting the cinema with a man, her heart had shrivelled and she went home to tell Marcus what she'd done.

She didn't think Serena would be interested in a former army medic with a serious need for therapy. She was probably happy with that guy. The thought of it made her heart twist with an emotion she couldn't identify. She thought she was in love with Serena.

'I think I'm in love with you.'

Serena had laughed, called her adorable.

'Don't go falling for every woman you meet' she teased, brushing a finger over Bernie's lips. _Too late_ Bernie thought. Her lips burned with the touch and her heart hurt with longing. Especially now that she knew she couldn't have her.

'_Let the sheets cool down before you invite someone else into your bed' _was an oft uttered phrase courtesy of her aunt and she'd grown up thinking that it would never apply to her. She had an unnatural lack of interest in people. As it turned out, she had an unnatural interest in women, a bit late in life. As much as she couldn't do without her children, she cursed herself with the unfairness of it all. To never know it until now; missing the opportunity to be able to revel in her desires, not live it as a dirty secret. Serena had taken her reticence at face value; Bernie wasn't her only lesbian encounter, she often attracted the shy ones, the ones too timid to make the first move for their first experience. Her friend Sian never missed an opportunity to tease her about her sapphic prowess.

'Will you just ditch the men already and be a fulltime lesbian?'

'I'm trying but I can't resist a hairy chest when the yearning takes me.'

'We all know that. Don't marry any more of them will you?' Sian muttered.

'Not going to make the same mistake again, don't worry.'

Serena would be willing to find a nice woman to settle down with but she never found one to suit. Especially one who would put up with her irritable daughter, Elinor. She didn't blame them. Bernie, she found enchanting, the first person in a while that had really interested her. She had been an absolute delight to seduce. An abrupt, scotch drinking, pale pink coated enigma, a most unusual jewel to find at the bar. She'd been difficult to crack but after a long while, she had begun to soften and once her gaze started to flit all over Serena, she knew she had her. She'd make this woman lose her restraint or Serena's reputation would be shot to pieces.

And what a night it was. First kiss turned into fifth kiss and when the clothes were off, the games really began. Serena's reputation reigned supreme and Bernie's repressed, frustrated sapphic virginity was finally disposed of with the artful swish of a tongue. It had been so long since she'd felt a tongue where Serena had wedged it, she was sure that she'd end up dead with pleasure in this pretty stranger's very comfortable bed. As she lay there, panting with exertion at the havoc wrecked upon her senses, she wondered about the world she'd missed out on and was she brave enough to return the favour? She desperately wanted to.

'Don't overthink. Just do it' whispered Serena, resting a light hand on Bernie's shoulder as she reclined. Bernie took her instruction and was pleased to find that it was every bit as good as she'd imagined it would be. She learned that she had the aptitude for it and if that wasn't high praise from a woman whose tongue could make her melt, she didn't know what was. Serena didn't care about the scars, she didn't care that her breasts were only a handful, she only cared about making sure that Bernie was enjoying herself.

She should have felt guilty when Serena brought her coffee in bed the next morning but waking up to someone who wasn't Marcus was a novelty and she'd not woken up to anyone for a long while. Which made it worse when she'd told Serena the truth. They weren't meant to see each other again. Serena was only meant to exist in her imagination from that point on, like Alex. But there they were in the same café a few days later and it was if a magnet was drawing them together. She waited until they'd gone outside and then told her, so Serena could walk away easily. But she didn't. She'd angrily stayed where she was so that Bernie had to explain herself properly. They'd foolishly exchanged numbers during their coffee time and Bernie didn't think she'd hear from her again after Serena had stormed off. But later that month, she got several messages from her that explained why Serena had reacted the way she had. The other woman knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of adultery and here was a woman she really liked, doing it to her spouse. Bernie hadn't known that but how could she? Serena said she should feel sorry for Marcus and she did. But she admitted that she couldn't keep away from Bernie, didn't want to. She was conflicted about how she felt. Bernie messaged her back telling her how sorry she was about her deception, why she'd done it. She knew it didn't excuse her actions but she poured all of her feelings out in words for a week, filling up a blank screen for their book to be read many times over, often late at night when neither could sleep.

After that, silence. Bernie expected that. She kept thinking of writing back but thought they had said everything they needed to say. Still she didn't delete Serena's number. Her finger hovered over her name every so often but she couldn't bring herself to cut that cord. Not yet.

Not until the divorce came through. Bernie didn't know what to do with herself anymore now that she didn't need to dwell on the state of her marriage anymore. She had started to make herself adjust to civilian life, signing up for locum shifts where she could and taking life slower. She hated to admit it but she wasn't as quick to recover as she used to be. She spent her days off decorating her flat, making it comfortable for Cam and Lottie when they visited. They were starting to thaw, not having fully forgiven her yet. She knew not to hope for it for a long time yet. But it had been a year since she last heard from Serena and she couldn't resist reading their previous words. It was 2am in the morning when she sent her next one.

_I'm free._

Those two little words waited with the recipient until a few days later when Serena apprehensively rang her back. Bernie wasted no time in answering it, basking in the sound of the velvet voice she'd longed to hear from in so long. She was under no illusion that there could be more between them. Just wanted to know she was doing well.

'I've thought about you a lot' Serena confessed. 'It was driving me crazy but I wanted you to make the first move. I wanted you to deal with your situation first. I think if you'd given it a few more months I might have broken that vow.'

'Just as well. My timing is getting better' joked Bernie. She paused before saying 'I know I shouldn't hope that you want to meet for a coffee sometime but…'

'I'd love to.'

Bernie blinked. That was astonishingly quick. 40 minutes later and there they were, Starbucks the sequel. Just the sight of Serena made her smile. The touch of her fingers on the back of her hand. The promise of more, written in her gaze.

Did she deserve it? She wasn't sure. But it was time for her midlife crisis to start and she was going to take it and see where it led her.


End file.
